


from hunger to dust

by d__T



Category: Ravenous (1999), Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Abbie POV, Asphyxiation, F/M, Gen, M/M, Poisoning, big sad, crossover takes place in the sleepy hollow universe, death by hypothermia, double homicide, light gore, love and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-19 15:33:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22167160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/pseuds/d__T
Summary: John Boyd finds someone who can grant him his final wish.
Relationships: John Boyd/Ives, background ichabod crane/abbie mills
Kudos: 16





	from hunger to dust

The answering machine clicks to itself. Nobody ever calls her landline and it feels like the machine is deciding  _now_ if it will continue to work. How long had the message sat before she even noticed it?

The machine finally starts the voice message.

“Abbie Mills.

I understand that you have experience with living myths and- men out of their time. I need your advice.”

There’s a longer pause here, and Abbie hopes that the caller understands how uncaring answering machines are.

“Before you dismiss me as a crank call; my birth name is Johnathan Boyd. I was born in 1812. You can find my Army transfer to Ft. Spencer in 1847, and my death certificate along with a Colonel Ives in that same year.

Please call me back.”

The voice leaves a phone number, still using the strange accent that it had switched to in the second half of the message before the machine clicks off.

Abbie hastily pushes the button to save the message.

1812.

She’s been dealing with ancient revenants for a hot minute- and Crane will be useless. He died well before 1812.

Who the fuck knows about 1847? She scrubs her hands back through her hair, pushing it back into shape, and calls Crane.

Abbie reviews Crane’s research and her notes from her conversations with Boyd while she’s on the plane. He’d wanted to come but his fake ID isn’t enough to get him on an airplane and a train to the west coast would take too long.

Crane’s had some trouble adjusting to the future; everything is too fast, too loud, too bright. But he’s gotten really damn good at libraries and databases. It had taken him about three days and a dozen phone calls to track Boyd and Ives down. The official records are a little fuzzy on what happened there. Shortly after Boyd was transferred to the no-man’s post on the heels of a commendation, there had been a huge spike in deaths. Nearly every person stationed there was reported dead in the following month. At that point, Colonel Ives was sent in to manage the situation, and whatever was killing there claimed him almost immediately. At that point Ft. Spencer was left abandoned until spring in a faint hope of freezing out the curse.

He’d even gotten in contact with the native tribe that had been local to the fort, but they didn’t have much. Just a skeleton of the wendigo myth that doesn’t say how to kill them, only that they’ll consume the whole world if left unchecked.

And all of the info ends at 1847. Boyd hadn’t given a new name, but  _someone_ had paid for her flight and a hotel.

It could be a trap.

Crane is right to worry.

She closes her eyes and dreams her way through the rest of the flight.

Boyd sees her before she sees him; there’s no photos of him and she’s been on the news.

He’s got short dirty blond hair, blue eyes, and broad build that he’s dressed well for. He’s roughly handsome but not in a way that stands out particularly.

“Nathan.” He introduces himself. They shake hands.

“Abbie. So what’s up?” He’s not what she pictured at all. Myths tend to be dark and operate at night, in her experience, and it’s a bright and sunny afternoon and he’s about as fair as they come.

He checks his watch. It’s antiquated looking, and silver. “I have two hours before I have to be home. Your hotel is nearby. Hungry?”

“Sure, I could eat.”

He takes her luggage for her, adroitly rolling it over all of the door sills on the way out of the airport.

They load up into his car, a perfectly normal silver thing. She knows better, and she’d still say that he’s more likely to kidnap her than be a wendigo. She turns on location sharing on her phone, sending it to her sister and Crane, and then dials Crane’s phone. She puts him on mute and drops the phone inside her jacket. He knows what to do.

They chat idly until they arrive at the cafe- it’s more of a coffeeshop than he’d described. She’s never been in California before and he’s obviously well at home here. The barista knows him and his order.

The cafe is loud- excellent cover to keep them from being overheard but Crane probably can’t hear shit from inside her jacket. She pulls her phone out and lays it on the table between them. She says, “Sorry,” not meaning it, as the phone briefly lights up with the active call.

Nathan acknowledges it, then picks her phone up to look at the contact picture. “He’s handsome.” He puts it back down.

“Yeah, uh.” Abbie swallows. “Tell us what you want. Start at the beginning and spare no detail.”

“I need you to help me kill Ives, and then I need you to kill me.”

Abbie puts her pen down. “I don’t do murder suicide.”

Nathan shakes his head. “We are obligate cannibals, Abbie. That day in 1847- I crushed us in a bear trap after beating and being beaten by him in ways that would have killed normal men several times over. We were buried side by side in unmarked graves. Ives dug his way out, dug me up, and fed me from his body.”

She makes a revolted face. She’s reconsidering her stance on murder-suicide.

“Yeah, that’s exactly what you think, it is.” He makes a wry expression. “I’m almost as strong as him by now, and ‘almost’ only because I generally refuse to eat until he forces me.”

Abbie quirks an eyebrow at him. They’re both eating right now.

“A drop in the ocean. Nothing satisfies like-” His expression closes. “If he offers you food, do _not_ eat it.”

She nods. “So you can be starved.”

“Not really. Believe me, I’ve tried. I kept him buried for about twenty years and all he did was eat himself fat during the Great Depression.”

“Twenty years.” She says, flat with disbelief. “Why do you think I can help you?”

“You subdued the horseman of death.” He shrugs. “Ives will be difficult; he wants to be alive. I- don’t. I will go willingly.”

She nods, about to speak when his phone buzzes beside hers on the table.

He looks at it. “Take all of your stuff and go to the bathroom. Do not come out for at least five minutes. I won’t be here when you come out. Do _not_ call me.”

She’s already gathering her stuff up and pulling her jacket on. “We will finish this later.”

“Yes. Thank you.” He sounds grateful. “Good luck.”

Somehow that’s not reassuring.

“Why here?” Boyd asks, out of place with his blond hair and blue eyes. Abbie fits right in here, loseable among the crowd.

“You were protecting me from Ives last time. I thought it better to go to a place that he wouldn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I don’t, but I’m right.”

“Yeah, okay.” Boyd gives it up to her. “Where are we starting?”

“What’s your relationship with Ives?”

Boyd gives her a wry smile. “I live with him. We have a house together. Our neighbors think we’re married although I’m the only one who wears a wedding band.”

“Are you-” Abbie asks, heart in free fall, “married.”

“Not legally, no, but we’ve been lovers for about sixty years, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She was, and she wasn’t. “How long have you been trying to stop him?”

She knows it’s a stupid question as soon as it leaves her mouth; it’s been since day one.

“I’ve given my entire life to stop him from cannibalizing the entire western territory.”

“Oh,” she says, “oh.”

“He fed me his body, and I give him mine. Freely and in any way he desires. All the other alternatives are worse.”

“I’m sorry.” It feels inadequate, so deeply insufficient. She can feel every year of his hundred and sixty odd years with the man in his words.

“Not all of it is bad. He’s a great ride.” Boyd winks at her.

“ _Really?!_ " Abbie chokes into her coffee. “Anyway, okay, _anyway_ , we’re thinking of a multi-prong attack to reduce all of his capabilities in tandem. A neurotoxin, freezing or burning him while the poison is acting, crushing his skull, burning the body, and dividing the ashes to several burial sites.”

“Thorough.” Boyd says quietly, reverently, like hope. “I was always held back by being unable to guarantee my own death after his. There is a certain- loneliness.”

“Can you punch your way through the wall of a chest freezer?”

“Unlikely.”

“Okay, good. That’s way easier than immolating a living being. That gets super messy.” She means it to be darkly funny, and Boyd just barely cracks a smile.

And then they get into the gnarly details of committing a double homicide.

The first time she sees Ives in real life, not in pictures on Boyd’s phone, he’s lying on the floor of the garage of the house he shares with Boyd. He’s gasping and shaking violently, his body at war with itself as he’s trapped with Boyd’s weight across his hips and his arms gripped across his chest in Boyd’s big hands. He’s smaller than Abbie expected and just as handsome as he was in the pictures.

“Get the freezer open.” Boyd grunts at her without looking.

Abbie hastens to lift the lid. The freezer is empty, and there’s a bucket of bagged meats beside it, wet with frost. She instinctively knows what it is and looks away. 

Boyd hauls Ives up and dumps him into the freezer, not exactly dumps but gently and forcefully pushes him down into it as he haphazardly struggles against the assault. Abbie shuts the lid as soon as Boyd gets his hands clear. He sits on it as she cranks the ratchet straps down around the freezer. 

And then it’s just them and the weakening thrashing sounds from inside the freezer in an otherwise perfectly normal suburban garage. Boyd looks between her and the freezer. “Fuck.”

He goes outside through the little side door. 

Abbie wants to follow but she stays leaning on the side of Boyd’s car, watching the freezer with her hand on her sidearm. 

He comes back in later; she’s got Crane on speakerphone but they’re not saying anything so she announces Boyd’s presence for him. 

They wait; Ives is quieting down, getting weaker. Boyd gets a shovel and goes back outside, digging holes and burying the meat from the freezer. He comes back in, a little sweaty from the work. They wait. 

“You’re so normal,” she says, “it’s hard to believe.”

Boyd shrugs one shoulder. “The best hiding place is in plain sight.”

“Hm.”

“Do you want- to see the house?” 

“Sure.” Ives has stilled. They can probably leave him now. 

Inside it is homey. Two men living together, not as bachelors but as lovers. One of them is messier than the other. There’s a meal left on the table, abandoned and extra food on the sideboard. There’s the disarray of a struggle, too, an overturned chair and a rug rumpled up against the wall and everything pushed off of a side table. 

“Don’t touch it.” Boyd says “When I’m gone, throw the food out or bury it.”

She takes his hand, hoping the gesture speaks for her. “You can rest soon.”

“God, I hope so.” 

Boyd spends a long time looking down at Ives. He looks almost peaceful, curled up on his side like that. Abruptly he hoists the sledge and slams it down on Ives’ head. 

She’d offered, and he’d said, “It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted.”

A spiderweb of cracks forms in the white plastic under Ives’ broken head. Boyd drops the sledge aside and pulls him up into an embrace. 

Abbie looks away; this is not for her to see, his words not for her to hear. 

Boyd reaches down into the freezer to wipe up some of Ives’ splattered head with two fingers. He puts his fingers in his mouth to lick them clean. He grimaces, “That taste has haunted me for a hundred and sixty years.”

Abbie watches, helpless and rapt. 

Boyd goes back inside, bringing out the garnish from the leftover food. It’s a sprawling coil of white fish, so thin it’s almost clear, and he’s holding it in his palm. 

“Stay with me until it hits. Then close the lid, I can’t promise what I’ll do.” He climbs into the freezer, and Abbie can’t think of a worse way to go than slowly freezing while suffocating from paralysis and staring at the smear of your enemy and lover. 

“You’re free now.” She offers. 

“Soon.” He says sadly, and wolfs down the fish in one mouthful. “Soon.”

It’s weird, then, to hope that a killer and cannibal finds peace as he struggles briefly inside the freezer before subsiding. 

“Miss Mills?” Crane breaks the quiet. 

“Yeah, Crane?” 

“Is it done?” 

“Almost.” 

“'Take us out to the desert and let us blow away like the dust we’re long overdue to become.'” Crane quotes Boyd at her. 

“He was a good man.” Abbie says quietly. “How did you kill people, in the war?”

“Righteousness, and faith that we were doing the right thing.” 

Abbie things about the time compression; Boyd’s 168 years and Crane’s 238. He’d died in a fight with a friend and a monster, and he’d woken up into the same war given new form. “Are you okay, Ike?”

“Miss Mills.” Crane says tightly. 

“That’s a no, then.”

“Do not presume to know my feelings.”

“You’ll be glad to know that there have been many advancement on how to reintegrate combat veterans into society.”

“Thank you, Miss Mills. I believe you have bodies to burn?”

“I miss you too, Ike.”

Crane sighs.

She watches them blow away, ash and dust into the red sunset.

And then she goes back to their home and destroys all of their food. She goes through every drawer, every cabinet and closet, removing stashes that must have belonged to Ives. And then in the back of a closet; two perfect uniforms, wool and cotton from 1847.

She’s done then. It’s over and so are they.


End file.
